


Take Me to the River

by tyndaridai



Category: Korean Drama, 상속자들 | The Heirs
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 08:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2103009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyndaridai/pseuds/tyndaridai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looks dangerous. He looks like every frame of celluloid sex they try to sell in the movie theatres.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Me to the River

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was intended to be for hisshouldersmyhands "Your hair looks sexy pushed back." However, this just totally got away from me. I think you’ll know what I mean when I get there, and I’m sorry that this isn’t more fluffy. I don’t really plan when I write unless it’s for something like D&D so this all just happened the more I wrote. I understand if you don’t like it or don’t think I addressed it well, but it is what it is so I might as well post it. 
> 
> Don’t worry I have other one shots that involve fluff. And I am working on the D&D update, but I'm just getting used to writing these two and I'm not entirely happy with how I'm doing it. So every fic is like practice until I get where I want. Unbeta'd as always, sorry.

They spend several weeks, every summer, at the beach. It has never been an organized event, rather the natural action of the wealthy elite who replace the Seoul smog with the clear waters of Jeju. Bo Na, Rachel, Young Do, and Tan used to spend nearly a month on the sand in their early teens--Rachel would read by the shore while Bo Na did her best to recreate Romeo and Juliet in the surf with Tan. More often than not she was just collateral damage in Young Do and Tan's epic battles in the waves.

 

> _(“Get out of the way Bo Na,” Young Do cursed at her. Tan, never responsible for anything, just smiled widely and shrugged when Bo Na hissed back at the taller boy._
> 
>   
>  _It wasn’t the first time Rachel had looked at Young Do and thought him capable of actual murder._
> 
>   
>  _“You leave,” Bo Na shouted back to him, tightening her hold on Tan's neck. “Is your brain as stupid as your hair? We’re in the middle of something.”_
> 
>   
>  _“I’m going to drown you in this water, Bo Na.”)_

 

Since Tan had left, come back, and uprooted their little world, some things had changed. The Kim family had not retreated to Jeju this summer, and Rachel could only imagine where Tan had hidden away with his precious Eun Sang, likely thinking that his refusal to comply with adolescent tradition was as much of a slight against her as it was against whatever he thought his family stood for. He hadn't spoken to her in months. Rachel cared very little about his childish rebellion.

 

Chan Young (much to Bo Na's delight) had replaced Tan. When Myung Soo found out that Young Do was indeed making the trip to the Choi hotel property that was thankfully still under his name, he'd declared it a party and invited Chan Young along to share his hotel room.

 

Bo Na and Rachel's relationship was as unstable and undefined as it had always been (more so now than ever before). However, Chan Young's presence took the edge off of Bo Na somewhat, and Bo Na directed her energy into the boy rather than wasting it on picking fights with Rachel.

 

Rachel didn't care. She came along to the beach, to the terrace, to the tennis court, but she mostly kept to herself. When Young Do watched her with a raised brow, he himself less energetically involved than he'd been before, Rachel just raised her book to him like a toast. They didn’t consider her a friend, not really. They were a group of people that would always be strangely connected to one another, and Rachel had burnt too many bridges this last year to change that now.

 

She couldn't however, turn Bo Na's chatter off like a switch.

 

They were at the beach, Rachel reading in the white lounge chair and Bo Na beside her, providing Rachel with a running commentary of Chan Young's actions peppered with insults against Rachel’s character. Chan Young, Myung Soo, and Young Do splashed around in the water several metres away from them.

 

"Ye-Sol was going to come up here too,” Bo Na says, shooting Rachel a glare over her oversized sunglasses. “But you’re so toxic she didn’t want to risk exposure.”

  
“Did you even want her here?” Rachel replies mildly, flipping a page.

  
“Well,” Bo Na struggles for a moment, brow furrowing, “No. But,” she accuses, “if you weren’t so exceptionally evil to her all year, Cha Eun Sang would be here. Tan is only avoiding this place because of you.”

  
“I didn’t realize that Tan and Eun Sang were such stimulating company Bo Na. _Grow up_ , Tan isn’t here because he’s made a martyr of himself. If he really cared about Eun Sang, he’d have let her come here to enjoy the sun with her _very_ best friend.”

  
Bo Na frowns. “I am _not_ her best friend.”

  
“He is,” Rachel inclines her head towards Chan Young and smiles when Bo Na gasps.

  
“ _Ya,_ ” Bo Na splutters in outrage, “are you implying something?”

  
“I wasn’t implying, I clearly stated that they were friends. Isn’t that true?”

  
“Just friends,” Bo Na grumbles petulantly, throwing her arms over her chest. “Barely even that. To say that they're best friends is just--” Bo Na breaks off with a sudden inhale, sharp enough for Rachel’s gaze to shoot up in mild curiosity.

 

Bo Na says nothing more, simply brings her hand up to cover her grinning mouth in a poor attempt to contain her growing excitement and remain unaffected for the sake of absolutely no one.  She was so transparent.

  
 _Disgusting_ , Rachel thinks, but smirks in detached amusement as she returns her attention to her book. Rachel doesn’t even need to look at the water to know that whatever had put Bo Na in this state was likely Chan Young shaped.

 

Against her better judgement, she does anyways.

 

Chan Young, according to the hushed praises pouring out of Bo Na’s lips beside her, is “adorable” as he slices his way through the water, hand ruffling his floppy, preppy, dripping hair. Young Do, emerging from the surf beside him, is decidedly not.

  
There is an ache sudden and deep at Rachel’s solar plexus and she stills in her beach chair as she watches Young Do take slow steps in the sand, long fingers pressing the water from his eyes. The sun highlights every ounce of water that drips from his toned body, long limbs and fine bones glistening in a way that Rachel privately thinks is ridiculous.

  
 _Strong_ , pops up in her mind, unbidden as she watches him trudge his way towards her in the sand. The muscles of his wrist flex when he scrapes his hand over his face and Rachel blinks, fingers tightening against the pages of the book on her lap.

  
He’s only a few feet away from her when he moves his hand from his face to his hair, those long fingers brushing the dark strands off and back from his forehead into a more dishevelled version of his usual quasi-pompodour. With the motion Rachel can finally see his face, brows black against skin that had gradually tanned over their week long stay at Jeju, eyes sharply slanted as he looks down at her.

  
He looks dangerous. He looks like every frame of celluloid sex they try to sell in the movie theatres, and Rachel finds that despite the sharp cut of his thigh muscles and the breadth of his shoulders, it is his hair, haphazard, dripping and slicked back from his forehead that draws her throat closed.

  
She, who has seen Young Do in a bathing suit every summer since she was 8, has never thought such things about him in her life. She swallows again and says nothing when Bo Na flounces off towards Chan Young, towels in hand, swing to her hips, and sand flying behind her.

  
“Where’s _my_ towel?” Young Do drawls, teeth flashing as he stands above her. His voice is so deep, but his tone so typically (comfortingly) arrogant, that she finds the grimace curl easily at her lips.

  
“There,” Rachel nods towards Bo Na who, sure enough, had thrust one towel into Chan Young’s hands and was using another to carefully dry every inch of the boy’s left bicep. Young Do lets out an aggrieved groan.

 

"Ya," he shouts, "Bo Na. That's my property you're mopping his muscles with. Aish,"  he curses under his breath when Bo Na shoots Young Do an unapologetic smirk and burrows her face into the shoulder of a red faced Chan Young. Young Do grimaces in distaste and drops down to the sand beside her.

  
  
“And why would you expect me to have it,” her words are flat as she appraises him. When he turns to her, hair still dripping and dark above his brows, Rachel carefully looks back to her book and clears her throat. “Do I look like a maid Young Do? Or did you confuse me for your latest female distraction?"

 

“It’s a nice day, why are you trying to make me sick?” He is droll, and Rachel feels anger flare up hot and sudden. _She_ was somehow an offensive thought? He reaches over to grab the book from her hands, but she slaps his fingers away, visibly more bothered than she normally allowed herself to be.

  
  
“Stop acting like a 5 year old. Find a towel and go-- you’re dripping all over me.”

  
  
“ _I’m_ the 5 year old,” he chuckles unkindly, and leans over so that the water from his hair drips down onto her thigh. “You’re the violent one. Ya,” he nods to her, impatient.  “Where’s _your_ towel?”

  
She gives him an icy glare and shuts her book. Her towel, which Young Do had clearly located before he’d even asked the question, was draped just under her thighs.

  
“Don’t you dare,” she warns him, thinking, as she takes in his calculating leer and the haphazard strands of his seductively wet hair, that whatever peace they'd made after the dissolution of their parent's engagement wasn't worth this.

 

His fingertips are inches from her knee, but he doesn’t push his luck any further. He sighs and drops down to lay on the sand. She has to strain her neck to even see him. “Why are you even here Rachel? You’ve barely spoken a word to anyone, you never swim. You’ve done an excellent job of sucking the fun out of everything. Well done, Sister.” He claps and water and sand fly onto the pages of her book.

  
“I’ve been reading,” she grits through her teeth, refusing to indulge him. From the water, she can hear Myung Soo call Young Do’s name.

  
“Yes,” Young Do says, smirking. “You’re a great multitasker.”

  
He always ruins everything with that mouth. She glares at him from her position on the chair, wishing that his eyes were open so that he could properly receive her displeasure. He doesn’t though, unconcerned by his words, her reaction, or the sickenly sweet couple several feet away from them. He is basking in the sun and her eyes are still drawn to the way his hair frames his face, the strands now lightly dusted with sand as well as water.

  
It was a good look she thinks in dismay, glare growing in intensity the more she imagines her fingers tangled in that hair.

  
She gathers her towel from beneath her legs and drops in on his head without a word.

  
“Ya!” his surprised shout of outrage is muffled by the terry cloth, and Rachel smirks. She leans back again, satisfied that he has not only been served his just desserts, but that she no longer has to look at the dishevelled strands of hair.

  
He sits up, harshly whipping the towel off his face.  She doesn’t even look up from her book as he burns holes into the side of her head with his stare.

  
“Do you want to die?” he enunciates with quiet menance.

  
She smiles, and turns another page of her book. “You’re welcome.” He is silent for a long moment and Rachel rolls her eyes. “You said you needed a towel, you should-- _hey_ ,” she panics when Young Do leans forward suddenly and slides his arms under her legs. “ _Young Do_ ,” she actually shrieks--something she hasn’t done since she was 3 years old-- when he stands and throws her unceremoniously over his shoulder. Her book falls from her grasp, the spine hitting Young Do in the calf.

  
She can hear Bo Na laughing from somewhere to her left, but all Rachel can see is the white of the sand and her own hair as it curtains her face. She burns with embarrassment, shock, and fury.

  
“Young Do,” she hisses, doing her best to use her flailing appendages as weapons, “put me down, _now. Young Do_!” her voice rises several octaves and she slaps at his back in frustration. Young Do says nothing, merely tightens his hold on her legs, his other hand on the small of her back to prevent her from flipping herself over his shoulders.

  
When Rachel turns to see the blue smudge of water coming closer she begins to really panic.

  
“No. Young Do stop. Don’t you dare--”

  
He doesn’t throw her. He probably would have just a year before, but instead Young Do walks right into the water with her over his shoulder. He lets go of her the second the water reaches his chest, but by then Rachel has already submerged, hand reflexively clutching at his shoulder as her world is replaced by salt and the colour blue.

  
She’s spluttering when she comes back up, unable to see anything past the wet mop of her hair.

  
“Young Do,” she hears Myung Soo call softly, and surprisingly he does not sound so amused by Young Do’s action.

  
“You _ass_ ,” she coughs, fingers digging into his shoulder as she holds onto him. “You complete ass.”

  
“You look like a mermaid,” he chuckles pitilessly, unfettered by her hold on him and entirely too pleased with himself.

  
“I can’t swim,” she responds flatly, eyes flashing.

  
It freezes the smug smile on his face, and Rachel who is struggling not to let the panic overwhelm her, enjoys the dumbfounded expression.

  
“What?” he utters and unconsciously brings his hand around to the small of her back to keep her closer to him. He blinks at her, lashes wet. "I’ve seen you in the water.”

  
“But you’ve never seen me swim.” She should be more clear, she can keep herself afloat. But she is such a weak swimmer that stating that she didn’t have the ability at all was closer to the truth. It wasn’t so abnormal in Korea, and Rachel had spent more time on yachts on the water that actually in water. She’d taught herself enough not to drown when societal necessities required her to be near a pool or ocean, but that was all. She wasn’t necessarily proud of it, but there was something about the depth and darkness of the water that set her on edge.

  
Young Do is clearly reeling.

  
He curses, movements suddenly a little more purposeful. “I’m sorry,” he says gruffly. “I didn’t think--”

  
“No,” Rachel snaps, but the anger drains the more he looks at her with that tight, remorseful expression. His closely drawn brows and the rigid line of his mouth betray his concern. "And you should have dropped me when I asked you to stop."

 

Young Do blanches, clearly thrown by the implication there. His forehead creases, and Rachel can see the protest rolling on his tongue. She knows he would never consciously do something that took advantage of, or made her feel uncomfortable. But the fact of the matter was, he had, even if it was something meant to be playful and innocuous as dumping a friend into the ocean. Young Do had an unfortunate history with exactly those types of actions and if he was going to be a part of her life (a fact that was becoming truer every day) he had to learn that she wouldn't tolerate it.

 

She remains resolute, staring him down with a flat, unyielding expression. Young Do watches her right back, meeting her stare with an unreadable look of his own. Still firmly held against his side, the two of them sway with the waves.

 

“I'm sorry," he says more firmly, sincerely, and it's Rachel's turn to blink at him in surprise. She doesn't think she's ever heard him apologize and mean it. "Can I,” he clears his throat and gently moves his hand so that he's supporting her by her wrists and not her back. “It would be better if you held on to me. I'll help you back."

 

She nods, suddenly unable to use her voice,  and loops her arms around his neck. Her face presses against his ear with the movement and Rachel can hear Young Do's pulse beating against his neck. They had never been so physically close before and Rachel is more than aware of the press of her body against his. It was only a few feet before Rachel could touch the bottom and disengage from him. She counts steadily in her head.

 

Young Do is quiet as they finally make it to shore, saying nothing when Bo Na bounds towards them, a puzzled look on her face. Beside her, Myung Soo looks uneasily between the two.

 

"What were you two doing?" Bo Na pesters suspiciously, probably more upset that she'd been deprived of her moment by the serious expressions on their faces. "Did you try something Young Do--Rachel?" Bo Na is suddenly reaching for her, prepared to defend her if necessary. Rachel can see the fury that grows on Young Do's face at the comment. Behind Bo Na, Chan Young is watching Rachel warily.

 

"Bo Na," Myung Soo chastises. "Young Do w--"

 

"We saw a jellyfish," Rachel interrupts cooly. No one else knew of her weakness in the water, and she'll make sure it stays that way. "It scared me, that's all. Now," Rachel gives a mutinous jut of her chin and begins to walk back towards her discarded book and chair. "If you're done with the theatrics and cheap romance," at this, Bo Na flushes, "I believe it's dinner."

 

There is only momentary hesitation, lingering confusion over the tension in the air that dissipates when Bo Na cheerfully takes Chan Young by the arm and starts back for the hotel. Chan Young throws another intent look Rachel’s way before he follows Bo Na’s lead.

 

Myung Soo offers Rachel a sheepish smile when he passes her, and Rachel, still dripping wet, returns it with a nod. But where was her towel?

 

"Here," Young Do says from beside her, and Rachel looks over to find him with a contrite expression on his face and her pink towel in hand.

 

"Where is yours?" He was still glistening, muscles slick but expression drawn. Water dripped from his hair down his nose.

 

"Around Chan Young's chocolate abs, most likely," he wipes the water off of his face before burying his hands in the pockets of his bathing suit. Did everything he own have pockets so he could slouch in that manner? It was attractive Rachel conceded, and when he was shirtless the position caused his pectorals to flex.

 

Rachel allowed the thought, but tossed her head.

 

"I suppose you can use mine," she offers dismissively as she presses the fabric to her sopping wet hair. She studiously avoids his gaze, aware that the tension that arose from their dip in the water had only built since they'd come ashore.

 

He's very quiet.

 

"Well?" she gestures, waving the towel in front of his face. "Are you going to take it or wait until my arm falls off? Honestly."

 

"I'm sorry," he interrupts her, serious, and she knows he isn’t talking about the towel. It's the 3rd time he's said it in the span of 5 minutes and Rachel, while appreciating the sentiment, is uncomfortable that he's saying it. Neither of them ever apologized to anyone, had they? Perhaps Young Do had developed the habit. "I didn't," he stops, grits his teeth, and exhales heavily through his nose. "It won't happen again."

 

"I know," she says simply and hopes he understands her meaning. It was the final word on the matter. What Rachel now realizes as Young Do watches her in quiet deliberation, is that there is respect there. He wouldn't have said the words if her accusation hadn't unsettled and upset him. And she wouldn't have bothered educating or forgiving him if she didn't  _care_ either. A different kind of tension coils at the base of Rachel's spine.

  
"Now take this," she orders to dispel the weirdness. "You look like a wet dog, and I refuse to be seen with you. Take it."

 

There is a pensive set to his jaw when he rubs at his eyebrow, studying her for a few moments before he follows her lead. "I thought you said my hair looked sexy pushed back," he drawls when he takes the towel from her, making sure to tussle his hair just so.

 

She rolls her eyes, refusing to indulge him, right as he may be. She absolutely, does not watch him as he dries his hair, nor does she admire the muscle and long line of his hands when does it. And she definitely doesn't think about the strangeness between them that had less to do with the serious discussion in the surf, and more to do with the new way he was looking at her and how that made her think of disheveled hair and white linen bed sheets.

 

"Well," she clears her throat, dispassionate. "You've always been hard of hearing."

 

From under the pink terry cloth, he finally smiles.

 

"I can teach you to swim."

 

She narrows her eyes. " _Shut up_."

 

"Was that a yes? You'll have to speak up, I'm hard of hearing."

 

 


End file.
